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I am following the news & discussion of Ma’Khia Bryant’s death. I am reminded of a very hard period in my life. I don’t know why (grief is strange), but I feel the need to share part of that story.
I was 16, riding home with my Grandfather after he picked me up from school when he told me he’d made the hardest decision he’d ever made as a parent – he was sending me to live somewhere else.
I was an impossible child to parent in my teens – I was angry at life, lashed out, and did whatever I wanted. My Grandfather was older & raising 3 of his grandchildren on his own after our Grandmother died.
He’d made the choice to focus on my siblings who were younger, following the rules, and needed the safety and stability I was disrupting.
Even at 16, I knew this wasn’t a choice my Grandfather wanted to make. But I moved in with my aunt anyway – the informal Black family foster system. I was miserable (so was my Grandfather who asked me to move back home a few weeks later).
I bullied & fought EVERYBODY in my new neighborhood – one time using a roller skate because it was close/available. The police were called.
I’ve carried razor blades, ridden in stolen cars (& recruited ppl to drive those cars because I didn’t know how to drive). All of it. Having teachers who cared for me and pushed me mattered. Going to college literally changed my life.
I am still here. I live a life that I could not have imagined at 16. Ma’Khia deserved the same. She deserved a life beyond her wildest dreams.
I don’t think there’s anything I can say to help you see Ma’Khia in all of her beauty & humanity. I share this because I needed to process why her death and the way some people are talking about her life & experiences reminds me so much of my own.
